Taiwan monitors China coast guard ships ‘drifting’ east of the island

Taiwan said Friday it has deployed vessels to monitor two China Coast Guard ships east of the island, as Beijing asserts authority over an area of the Western Pacific.

China claims Taiwan is part of its territory and also insists that waters around the island democracy come under its jurisdiction, which Taipei rejects.

Chinese ships began last month to patrol an area of the Western Pacific near Taiwan’s east coast, which Taipei branded as “provocative” and “expansionism in disguise”.

On Friday, Chinese state media reported that the China Coast Guard (CCG) had carried out a “routine law enforcement patrol in the waters east of China’s Taiwan Island”.

“The CCG will continue to strengthen law enforcement patrols in waters under China’s jurisdiction and resolutely safeguard national territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests,” CCG spokesperson Jiang Lue was quoted as saying.

Taiwan’s coast guard said two CCG ships were “stationary and drifting” separately about 151 nautical miles (280 kilometres) east and 43 nautical miles northeast of Orchid Island, which is off Taiwan’s southeast coast.

“They are currently being continuously monitored by the Coast Guard Administration’s ‘Taipei’ and other vessels,” Taiwan’s coast guard said, describing the Chinese patrols as “psuedo-law enforcement”.

Chinese ships regularly ply the East China Sea, Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea to assert Beijing’s maritime claims over disputed waters and islands.

China started patrolling waters to the east of Taiwan for the first time last month following talks between Japan and the Philippines to draw a boundary in that area, which Beijing called “illegal”.

A Taiwanese security official warned recently that China’s “authoritarian expansionism” in regional waters will persist if the world fails to act.

China is “constantly pushing the limits through an incremental salami-slicing approach”, Lii Wen, a deputy secretary-general of the National Security Council, told an international forum.